whiplash

this movie was amazing imo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d_jQycdQGo

For a while I admired its singlemindedness of purpose, even dismissing The Girlfriend in one cruel and apt scene, but I didn't believe a moment of the last 30 minutes.

the twist was pretty great though come on

some discussion from the Oneida thread:

<3 kid millions
haven't seen this movie but i know he is otm about it
http://thetalkhouse.com/music/talks/kid-millions-talks-whiplash-and/

― vigetable (La Lechera), Monday, January 12, 2015 9:34 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

<3 kid millions
but he is not otm

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Monday, January 12, 2015 9:39 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"Whiplash" is good imo

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Monday, January 12, 2015 9:40 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I haven't seen it, I should refrain from opining.

― vigetable (La Lechera), Monday, January 12, 2015 9:53 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oneida-headz - is there any way to get the recent brah tapes other than on cassette?

― tylerw, Monday, January 12, 2015 9:59 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I haven't seen it either, but the impression I got from the trailer is that it's not really about music as music, or rather that music could be substituted with any competitive young person activity in which there's a teacher-student or coach-student relationship. Like it might just as well be drumline drumming, or some kind of competitive dance team thing. But it also didn't seem totally far-fetched to me that there are musicians out there who might treat jazz big band that way. Although that doesn't square AT ALL with my high school and college big band playing experience -- we did go to competitions, but even when we were competing the director was much more interested in making sure we captured the nuances and feeling of the music than in some kind of tempo contest. I don't see any of that as necessarily meaning it isn't a good movie though.

― walid foster dulles (man alive), Monday, January 12, 2015 11:57 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

saw oneida on saturday with james mcnew playing bass? is that a thing? great show but they got kicked off stage after like half an hour for some macbook dj.

― adam, Monday, January 12, 2015 12:25 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yikes, that sounds criminal. Half an hour is not enough time. McNew has played with them before though.

― grandavis, Monday, January 12, 2015 12:26 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it seems like a movie about abusive teachers who "force greatness" out of their carefully chosen students and that's not my thing at all, movie about drumming and teachers aside. i dunno. maybe it's like the Nadia of drumming movies.

― vigetable (La Lechera), Monday, January 12, 2015 12:48 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

seems like mcnew is pretty much in oneida now? at least he's been playing live w/ em for at least the past year or so. don't know if he contributes on record though.

― tylerw, Monday, January 12, 2015 12:55 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the truncated show was a drag but they sounded awesome. two extended kraut jams and a rock and roll song. i spent all my merch table cash on beer, is the brah tapes stuff mailorderable? they def sold me on what they are doing these days.

― adam, Monday, January 12, 2015 1:15 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh man, that saturday bill had chris forsyth on it too...right? and yes - 30 minutes is way too short.

finally got a tape deck -- had a listening session where we went through all 4 brah tapes consecutively. together, it's a pretty massive double album worth of really good material, spanning everything from shorter burners in the vein of preteen weaponry to amorphous imposing improv with the flavor of "a list of the burning mountains", to oscillating, almost-mellow dronescapes. i've yet to digitize anything, but will get around to it if for no other reason than to listen to at work.

lots of stuff to look forward to in 2015, per their site:
+Recording the THIRTEENTH Oneida album (This is Thirteen II—still gotta run that one by the guys).
+Blowin’ the Rhys Chatham/Oneida album for Northern Spy
+Layin’ the fourth People of the North album out on the stoop

till then, here's jam i (roughly) captured from july. pretty sure this is...new?

http://www.youtube.com/v/L4zCl5uSXRg&fs=1&hl=en

― dronestreet, Monday, January 12, 2015 1:22 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

nice jam. they didn't play that one on saturday.

chris forsyth w/ band was excellent too, they are playing bk again next month to which i will definitely go.

― adam, Monday, January 12, 2015 2:07 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it seems like a movie about abusive teachers who "force greatness" out of their carefully chosen students and that's not my thing at all, movie about drumming and teachers aside. i dunno. maybe it's like the Nadia of drumming movies.

― vigetable (La Lechera), Monday, 12 January 2015 18:48 (1 hour ago) Permalink

Since that kind of "greatness" is so anathema to what I consider great in drumming, I just feel like I'm going to have to go in not thinking of it as a music film. Then again music films generally tend to be even more fraught with cliches, impossibilities and fanciful myths than biopics in general.

― walid foster dulles (man alive), Monday, January 12, 2015 2:11 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Although it's not totally without precedent in the real world (pretty sure Buddy Rich did see music as that kind of competition, for example).

― walid foster dulles (man alive), Monday, January 12, 2015 2:12 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"Whiplash" is good imo

i hope it's good, but have a reaaally hard time imagining that it feels real to anyone with similar experiences. honestly i'm mostly hoping for hilarious camp.

― virtuoso thigh slapper (Jordan), Monday, January 12, 2015 2:24 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, i definitely saw all the stuff kid millions criticizes about the film as intentional, that ultimately the whole thing is about the sort of folly some people engage in, people who think you can turn somebody into charlie parker by throwing a cymbal at their head, and how some people have an exceptional kind of magnetism to where they can actually get folks to believe something that self-evidently stupid. that's not really a "jazz" thing per se.

― rushomancy, Monday, January 12, 2015 2:45 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

russian olympic jazz

― walid foster dulles (man alive), Monday, January 12, 2015 2:47 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I didn't buy that this man would sabotage a show for the sake of proving a point.

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/whiplash-getting-jazz-right-movies

(Buddy Rich? A loud and insensitive technical whiz, a TV personality, not a major jazz inspiration. As I heard his name in the film, I spoke it in my head as dubiously as Leonardo DiCaprio says “Benihana” in “The Wolf of Wall Street.”)

xp alfred - yeah me neith but still a gut wrenching twist which made the comeback more chest poundingly awesome

xxp what does this movie have to do with oneida

still haven't seen it, but man, i wish they would have looked to jazz drummers who can act a little rather than actors who can kinda drum. or focused on a different instrument that's easier to fake, like trumpet or something.

I loved The Guardian's frame of reference:

For me, it revived (happy) memories of testy Mr Shorofsky and frizzy-haired Bruno Martelli in Fame.

the drummer from Oneida wrote a piece about the movie.

still haven't seen it, but man, i wish they would have looked to jazz drummers who can act a little rather than actors who can kinda drum. or focused on a different instrument that's easier to fake, like trumpet or something.

― virtuoso thigh slapper (Jordan), Thursday, January 15, 2015 11:51 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm, but man, I've seen some horrendous trumpet- and saxophone-miming. For some reason, actors think you have to shake the instrument with each note.

ha. i think Mo' Betta Blues is the gold standard of trumpet-mime. maybe Bird for sax?

the thing is, maybe that's not what it's like to study jazz drums, i wouldn't know, but like, if this mischaracterization produced such a great film... who cares?

The drumming in Bird looked hella fake

still haven't seen it, but man, i wish they would have looked to jazz drummers who can act a little rather than actors who can kinda drum. or focused on a different instrument that's easier to fake, like trumpet or something.

― virtuoso thigh slapper (Jordan), Thursday, January 15, 2015 11:51 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the acting was SO GOOD though and i didn't notice anything sketchy about the drumming, assumed he had a body double

at least that's how I remember it, trying to find clips now

maybe Bird for sax?

That actually stood out for me -- Whitaker nailed the miming (and looked like he'd actually studied the fingering to some extent).

Curious to see how Cheadle does in the upcoming Miles film.

ok like here, early in clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2qHFmdojy8

sound is clearly hi-hat, drummer is playing ride

Buddy Rich gets a bad rap :(

the guy playing dizzy seems to be doing a credible job, but I don't play trumpet so IDK

i got whiplash on the Cyclone

xp btw I thought that NYer article was totally wrong about Buddy Rich -- a lot of things about him annoy me but he was a true jazz drumming great and I think pretty much any jazz drummer would agree.

i think the writer-director of this pitcher is a friend of our own max?

yeah Buddy Rich's playing never sounded un-musical to me. he had a one-in-a-million level of technical mastery and his own bands showcased it. but he was also on some early charlie parker/dizzy gillespie small group records and sounds good imo.

i really like this '70s small group Buddy Rich record, 'Live at Buddy's Place'. there are a couple tracks where he plays funk and has a refreshingly off-kilter approach:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bf4HOaumSuk&index=3&list=PL7ooSLAsF45PAABbTWhnM67lqptdkUqdf

His playing in those Krupa/Rich battle records is dope.

If anything I think the thing that makes him not get mentioned as a canon jazz drummer as often as others is sort of a combination of his attitude and his marketing -- he simply chose to go the route of promoting himself as a kind of musical wonder rather than an "artist," and treated drumming as though it were an ongoing competition to be the "top." His playing itself is very swinging and musical and generally enjoyable, even though the bands he put together eventually got kind of boring.

I like what he did in the Nat King Cole - Lester Young trio (easily my favorite playing of his), and he's refreshingly unobtrusive on the Bird records. But apart from those, I can't stand him.

he's also very tasteful on the 'Ella & Louis' record, which nobody mentions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ella_and_Louis#Personnel

but yeah i get that it's mostly due to his image, the famous bus tapes, etc.

in terms of its lack of realism or how dissimilar it was to other people's jazz education, IMO it's totally plausible that there are people out there for whom playing big band jazz is about playing it super tight and fast and having sick chops. the insistence in that new yorker piece that jazz is all about the soul, maaan misses the point. maybe for some people it's about that, but for the people in this movie it isn't. whether simmons' character misunderstands jazz or understands it in the same way as the guy from oneida doesn't matter, the movie just depends on the fact that he believes in his own understanding of it

Buddy Rich is also good on whatever Norman Granz jam sessions he's on.

This movie would make me wanna throw cymbals at the screen. I read a synopsis that suggests that the narrative validates the abuse of the teacher, and I read a review that says as much, too. And Buddy Rich is a baffling choice for jazz drum hero in 2014. What kind of Yngwie Malmsteen asshole would choose Buddy Rich among all the jazz drummers he'd surely hear first?

Clam.

I think this movie really doesn't care about music (or liking music or liking making music) which is weird for a movie where playing music plays such a big part, but at that same time I think as a movie about obsession/sadomasochism it's works pretty well and is nicely acted/plotted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47yxLg2RyXM

I think most jazz d-bags think jazz is about technique and creativity, not "soul." Student and teacher jamming out together as equals at the end suggests that the writer thinks the teacher's "tough love" is good pedagogy, and it's not.

i'm most interested in kid millions' point about the cognitive dissonance between the plot and the playing. are we supposed to interpret the kid's playing as being as entry-level as it actually is, or suspend our disbelief?

i should really stop talking about this since i haven't seen it though, sorry.

xp

i'm actually in favor of 'tough love' pedagogy (or at least it worked for me and i respond well to it, i know others don't), but it has to be aiming towards a noble goal. like, my own college jazz education was this way, at one point half the class/band was kicked out for the rest of the semester (they still passed the class on the books, but that wasn't the point). others quit at different times. but it was all about taking it seriously, learning the history, listening & being musical, etc.

in terms of its lack of realism or how dissimilar it was to other people's jazz education, IMO it's totally plausible that there are people out there for whom playing big band jazz is about playing it super tight and fast and having sick chops. the insistence in that new yorker piece that jazz is all about the soul, maaan misses the point. maybe for some people it's about that, but for the people in this movie it isn't. whether simmons' character misunderstands jazz or understands it in the same way as the guy from oneida doesn't matter, the movie just depends on the fact that he believes in his own understanding of it

― flopson, Thursday, January 15, 2015 12:27 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's kind of hard to conceive of any even remotely high-level musical director in ANY style of music who thinks it's all just about chops and speed. Like I just can't imagine that person even getting hired in a good conservatory. That said, I'm prepared to suspend my disbelieve because I don't think jazz is what the movie is *really* about.

What kind of Yngwie Malmsteen asshole would choose Buddy Rich among all the jazz drummers he'd surely hear first?

ha this kind of makes sense to me, technical ability is a lot easier to appreciate & approximate than the more subtle (and important) aspects of music, right? and when you haven't been playing long you're a lot more concerned about it, or at least was. that's my excuse for listening to a lot of very silly prog, fusion, and metal (and Buddy Rich!) in high school.

I've never heard anyone ask "who was the fastest jazz drummer ever?" The fastest drummers are the guys who win those "fastest drummer" competitions, and no one ever hears of them.

i haven't seen this. i def knew really talented music students who were really chops-centered as a whole thing. couldn't even tell what it was about music they enjoyed, but i guess they did. they seemed to be hungering for a feeling of being impressed, if not moved in the way that i wanted from music. aside from contemporary jazz players who were technically really amazing, the dudes i'm thinking of were into dream theater and shit

Any type of music degree program that doesn't center itself on developing the technical ability of its students is doing those students a massively damaging, career-limiting disservice.

well yeah, but "developing the technical ability of its students" is a little more complicated than BPM

it's also a movie, and i believe we're led to assume that in the time jumps jk occasionally said something to them other than "not my tempo"

i respect if folks familiar with the drum world are distracted by implausibilities and technical errors, but imo the film wasn't trying to be a documentary about jazz drumming

Well yes, but saying "what type of high-level instructor focuses on chops" seems like a wholly absurd thing to say to me, given the exposure I've had by proxy to music performance programs and the people who have gone through them

I think goole's point was, what kind of high-level instructor focuses on chops to the exclusion of every other aspect of music instruction?

Isn't that kind of the point though? He's not really a very good "instructor".

exactly. he takes a crop of students already good enough to attend a conservatory, and puts them through a death march, believing this will give them the discipline to succeed (and it focuses on an easy-to-grasp aspect of their training, rather than giving a thorough portrait of life in a conservatory, as a thorough portrait of life in a conservatory isn't really the goal). if one's response to this is "woah, that's a horrible way to make great musicians" - congrats! people in the movie agree with you and he loses his job.

I am waiting for someone to make a moving like Whiplash about the Magic Band. That would probably be a great movie.

I'd like to know if there are any elements in this film that are true to the experience of hot shit musical academy jazz bands. For example, given a numerical value, are there drummers that can hit a tempo exactly, minus any other frame of reference?

you'd probably need a definition of exactly

I mean hitting the exact numerical tempo

prbly not. otherwise j.k. simmons would be locked up at NIST

Well more to the point the "you're behind! You're ahead!" was so arbitrary and incorrect that by the time he expected a son to pull a BPM out of a hat I was like "oh right this fucking guy"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOCTkH2DdpA

bobby mcferrin line got me

but the joke hits a bit too close to home because the speed regulator on my technics table is broken

I laughed at the Bar Mitzvah DJ line

the way J.K. Simmons is clapping out the tempo/counting in the tune in the one clip...I've never seen a band director, or any musician, anywhere, ever, start a piece by clapping like that.

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Tuesday, March 3, 2015 7:38 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, this. I mostly don't care if this film "really gets music school" or not but that awkward, stiff "five six and" thing, guhhhh.

I think Peter Erskine pointed out that even he'd have trouble getting a tempo from the way the guy counts it off.

but maybe that's the whole point of the film?

this movie made me profoundly uncomfortable at its end, and not in a good way

Another pro musician and teacher friend points out that the guys practicing habits (straining, playing til fingers bleed etc ) would actually produce bad technique.

(straining, playing til fingers bleed etc )

tbf, he's playing with those new serrated-metal drumsticks.

Andrew wk origin story

this film was utter horseshit
Simmons was pretty good tho'
Teller was amazing, that kid is gonna be great over the next five years

Conducting of the volume taper in last bit was lol

― you can buy your hair if it won't grow (Sufjan Grafton), Wednesday, March 4, 2015

Yeah, this was way dumb. Kinda fun to watch and talk bullshit over though.

I had an internship with a guy a couple of years ago who majored in jazz drumming (not sure which school, but he dropped out) who did say that it was incredibly intense and unhealthy for him. Said he would basically practice until his hands were bleeding.

@ebaynetflix
'Whiplash' made me really happy that I never viewed music like anyone in that film.

https://twitter.com/ebaynetflix/status/579897677065900033

when the end credits for this came up i realized i'd gotten into a big fight with the writer/director on livejournal in 2005. woulda felt worse if it had been the editor.

btw

Is there a similar film about an abusive director?
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Wednesday, January 21, 2015 4:33 PM (2 months ago)

I thought the visual style of Whiplash was very dated, the psychology didn't make any sense to me, the car crash seemed like awful writing, the big band concept would have made a lot more sense if it took place in the 30s, The Social Network told a similar story better and managed to say something abt contemporary society at the same time, Simmons' teaching technique and the concept of negative motivation didn't make much sense to me and had nothing to do with what I know about what motivated Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Billy Strayhorn, but I enjoyed the music.

Maybe I missed the point entirely, I sure was surprised to read Madonna's reaction in RS:

When the character said, ‘I’d rather be a 34-year-old genius who did something with his life, dead of a heroin overdose, than live to be 93 and do nothing’, I totally was like, ‘Yes’. That really resonated with me.

Reminds me of Lennon's response to "Hey Hey My My":

I hate it. Its better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out. I don't appreciate worship of dead Sid Vicious or of dead James Dean or of dead John Wayne. It's the same thing. Making Sid Vicious a hero, Jim Morrison--its garbage to me. I worship the people who survive. Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo. They're saying John Wayne conquered cancer--he whipped it like a man. You know, I'm sorry that he died and all that--I'm sorry for his family--but he didn't whip cancer. It whipped him. I don't want Sean worshipping John Wayne or Sid Vicious. What do they teach you? Nothing. Death.

Sid Vicious died for what? So that we might rock? I mean its garbage, you know. If Neil Young admires that sentiment so much, why doesn't he do it? Because he sure as hell faded away and came back many times, like all of us. No thank you. I'll take the living and the healthy.

curious to see what Madonna considers "nothing". iirc raising a family and living to see your grandkids and great-grandkids isn't "nothing".

had my right hand inspected by a jazz drummer at a free workshop last night
other guy involved in the convo (bass player) asked if he was inspecting for callouses

um, what was he inspecting for?

honestly idk -- i know that my hands are strong (bony, but strong!) and also it was weird that he grabbed my hand and began to inspect it but i got a distinctly whiplashy feel to the interaction so i wanted to put it here. i still haven't seen the movie btw. i asked half-jokingly if he'd like to inspect my arm but he declined.

i went up to him after his set to say that i enjoyed it, told him i am also drummer (and how long i have been playing) and the inspection followed after a line of questioning intended to determine whether or not i was ready to participate in the workshop (it is an open jam workshop type thing).

sounds kinda icky

it def has never happened before
i didn't feel like gross or anything it just seemed like an excessive measure of my dedication to grab my hand and inspect it. welcome to my world!

I asked my bridge teacher if she'd seen Whiplash after ridiculing me for leading away from an ace. She laughed

I have to admit this one sort of lost me when Teller and Reiser continued talking after Rififi started. After that I was all "Simmons slapped you...fuck you, you talked during a movie...You're bleeding?...Hit by a truck?...Fuck you, you talked during a movie."

Need to work on that. Simmons was a very convincing piece of human garbage tho, and I'm very excited for the good movies Teller will do in the future between all the paycheck stuff he'll most certainly take on.

i watched "keep on, keeping on" last night and it was everything this movie wasn't and is highly recommended.
clark terry was a helluva guy

This is a pretty cool interpretation of Whiplash

definitely interesting to think of the film as a manifestation of an aspiring musician's anxieties

this is a thoroughly silly movie. lots of unintentional hilarity.

but then, i also woke up in the middle of the night after an incredibly vivid anxiety dream/nightmare about missing a gig with my band.

Basically the Karate Kid on drums.

it's so dumb how when doing press for this movie, they were all semantically evasive about saying 'almost all the drumming you see in the movie is him'. of course, people are going to take that to mean that you're also hearing him play, but that's not true 98% of the time. he just did a half-decent job at miming (although watching his stiff-armed, palm-down, pinkie-out ride cymbal technique is painful...but maybe that's in-character for a college freshman drummer? except when they switch to overhead shots all of a sudden it's someone with nice grip).

Neil Peart on Whiplash:

"There is no blood in jazz drumming, and there are no bullies in jazz drumming. My teacher Peter Erskine was saying he feels ungrateful because it's great there's a movie about drummers, but why is it so flawed humanistically and in small technical ways that didn't cost anything? It wouldn't cost anything to have a proper jazz drum set and to show the guy how to use his wrists. And the bloody ice cube jug or whatever? Absurd! There's a Band-Aid on my finger right now – yeah, I bleed. But jazz drumming, no, there is no bleeding."

flappy bird said this on the la la land thread

the depiction of a music teacher as a sadistic drill master

there are no bullies in jazz? there are no sadistic drill sergeant wannabes in music education? what fucking planet are you and Neil Peart from?

i've heard that Buddy Rich tape! bullying in the name of such boring music is unfortunate though.

The hand inspection! So much has happened since then.

One of my students asked me if I had seen this movie a couple days ago. I said yes and he asked what I thought. I replied by asking what he thought about the teacher (since I am his teacher) and I don't exactly remember what he said but we agreed that the teacher was abusive. IIRC he also said that some people with talent "need" that sort of treatment to reach their full potential. I thought about what a pervasive idea this is, that talented people should/might need to be bullied into excellence. I don't agree but is this common wisdom?

Talented people can be lazy as hell

Who's an example of an IRL talented person who required other people to bully them to accomplish anything?

If they are lazy, they need to develop willpower, which bullying isn't great at imo

I can't think of an example because it seems like "wisdom" that comes from excuse-making after someone is bullied rather than a legitimate strategy for achieving excellence. "He needed it to achieve his potential" -- that's essentially what my student said and I found it kind of surprising.

xp to NA - That's kind of a "prove a negative" problem in certain professions I can think of, music education certainly being one.

I think a lot of music educators - not one-on-one instructors much, but definitely bandleaders, conductors etc. use bullying and similar drill instructor techniques as a shortcut to get obedience out of small crowds of geniuses.

I should differentiate between the truly pathological, manipulative shit that JK Simmons does in this movie, and the shouting and belittling that are par for the course in marching bands and military training everywhere

Art Taylor published a book of interviews he conducted with (famous) jazz musicians, and none of the drummers in the book cite "tough love" as a motivator for being creative or improving their craft. The closest they come is one drummer describing how hard he studied and practiced, telling a story about being really competitive about who gets to the equipment for practice in the morning when he lived with another musician. Meanwhile, another drummer in another interview basically says jazz is about feeling and not technique, and a lot of the musicians from the period Art Taylor focuses on describe their experiences of learning to play by listening to and playing with musicians they like.

When I was reading the motivation literature as a prelude to entering a teaching credential program a few years ago, I learned that a lot of the motivation folk wisdom about, e.g., rewards and punishment is wrong, and those things are not particularly motivating and can in fact be demotivating. Even the "conservative" hardliners and dissenters in motivation literature like applied behavior analysis researchers and practitioners or Pritchard, Campbell & Campbell believe punishment is demotivating.

I think people espouse the virtues of tough love because it's easy. If someone isn't doing as well as you'd hope, or if someone seems disinterested, you can yell at them or force them to do something. It's easy to find anecdotal evidence of this having some effect on young people. You hold their feet over the coals and then they do the thing you asked, therefore your tough love made them into the intelligent and responsible adults they become, no credit due to having literature in the home, or to eating with them, or to giving access to the tools they need to think and be creative, or to the daily demonstrations we give of how to live in the world and get along with others.

Yeah, not disputing any of that. Interestingly I've come to realize the structured "tough love" I got in the service did more to bring out my work ethic and confidence than the previous nearly two decades of whatever my parents and teachers had been doing.

I am certain that almost no famous creative person would ever point to a disciplinarian as a prime motivator, though.